25

OH, HOW WE REJOICED THAT SUMMER, after the Great Terror ended and those of us lucky enough to have survived were set free! So many had died—we had to live twice as intensely, for their sakes. And in truth, we did not know what the future would bring; perhaps there were more terrors to come. So we went wild, enjoying a surfeit of pleasure each day and making each night a feast for all the senses, a banquet to be savored until we were replete.

What good times we had, going to the Cafe Lestrigal (now refurbished and enlarged, with a stage and a Russian band) and the Elysee National to hear Black Julien’s Band, dancing on the tombstones at the Zephyr’s Ball in the cemetery of Saint-Sulpice, paying our compliments to the Altar of Love at Wenzell’s where the subscription parties were so crowded we had to dance out in the street. The theaters were full, and the tickets exorbitant, though most of the theaters, it must be said, were little more than brothels then because the foyers were full of bare-breasted prostitutes and all the balcony seats were bought by expensive courtesans soliciting rich clients. At the Varietes, it was rumored, a man could hire a different woman every night for a year, there were so many inviting companions for sale.

We indulged in fads and went mad over silly things like wearing green wigs and purple wigs, men’s trousers, and coachman’s hats. We invented foolish ways of talking, leaving the r’s out of our words or babbling like babies. We called each other extravagant names: I was Puff Pastry because of my ample breasts, my friend Therese Tallien was Eclair, Julie Recamier was Profiterole. We were often seen in the park driving herds of goats, or riding ponies, or feeding the tame gazelle Scipion brought me from Africa.

It was in those days, right after my release from prison, that I learned to drive a phaeton and often rode through the park in the afternoon, stopping to call on friends or visit my dressmaker and milliner and corsetier. I bought lavishly and ran up huge debts. Beyond the cost of my rented house and Eugene’s military school tuition, Hortense’s school fees and little Coco’s governess, there were servants to pay and food and fuel to buy. Everything was expensive, but like many other survivors I felt that nothing was too good for me. I deserved it all.

And besides, I had someone to pay for it. I had Paul Barras.

“You know what they say about him,” Scipion commented to me on the night we met at the Carmelite Dance Hall (the former Carmelite prison, where I had been so wretched and ill and had thought of ending my life). “They say he is the richest man in Paris.”

“The richest in France,” I corrected him. “You should see his mansion. He lives as grandly as a prince.” Barras not only lived like a prince, he looked like one, with his dark, somewhat overripe handsomeness, his charm and easy grace of manner, his unruffled demeanor, his abundance of magnificent rings and subtly elegant dress. In actuality he was a minor Gascon nobleman. I guessed his age at forty-eight or nine.

“He was in the army, you know,” Scipion was saying. “Long before the Revolution. They threw him out for perversion. No scandal, just a quiet exit.”

“What sort of perversion?”

“It seems he enjoys both men and women in bed.” “At the same time?”

Scipion laughed. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”

Paul and I had become lovers late one night after a ball given by the former Duc de Lorgne, an old acquaintance of mine from my days at Fontainebleau, in the rue Saint-Germain. I had been introduced to Paul earlier in the evening and we had danced together—the new fashionable dance, the German waltz. At the end of the evening we found ourselves going out the door at the same time, and he offered to drive me home in his large carriage.

The carriage, I soon discovered, was a vehicle made for seduction. The seats folded out to make a soft bed, there were scented pillows and a blanket in a small cabinet next to the door. The driver, who had undoubtedly been given instructions beforehand, knew to go slowly and the horses clip-clopped at a walking pace. I yielded eagerly to Paul’s searching hands, accustomed as I was, after my time in prison, to lovemaking with strangers. I was not disappointed.

Paul was generous. From his extravagantly large fortune, made from selling sour wine and rotting grain and rusty muskets as a provisioner to the army, he sent me large bank drafts and bought me my charming phaeton decorated in gold leaf, and the two black Hungarian horses that pulled it. In a short time I became part of his inner circle, the inner circle of a powerful man. For Paul Barras was not only my protector and defender, he was the leading figure in the current government.

“You should be wary of him,” Scipion said brusquely. “He’s corrupt. And cynical.”

“Aren’t we all corrupt and cynical these days?” I was goading Scipion, who I knew to be decent and upstanding. Though what I said was very largely true; government, business, the military were all riddled with dishonesty and everywhere one turned there was graft and bribery, cheating and petty crime.

Scipion took my face between his hands, and looked at me with genuine tenderness. “We’ve known each other such a long time, Yeyette,” he said, using my old girlhood name. “I would hate to see you go down that road.”

But of course I did not heed Scipion’s words. I put on the pleasureseeking, indolent life into which Paul led me as easily as I had once slipped into the loose-fitting, body-draping gowns of Martinique. Growing more and more heedless of responsibility, and leaving the oversight of the children to Euphemia and the other servants, I slept until noon each day, had a late breakfast and then devoted my afternoons to pleasure. Paul visited me at five each evening, we spent several lazy hours in bed, dined late and then whiled away the long, wine-sodden night in Paul’s private grotto in the garden of his mansion.

Night after night I danced there in the grotto, in the nude, behind a gauze curtain, while Paul and his wealthy men friends watched. My dance was only one of many attractions: hermaphrodites, men of prodigious size and even more prodigious virility deflowering young girls, raconteurs who told ribald stories. Young men and women of exceptional beauty were hired to decorate the grotto and provide diversion; long before the night was over all the clothes had come off and an orgy had begun.

I slept in the grotto on many an inebriated evening, and wakened, bleary-eyed and hung over, to face the unwelcome noon. The louche admiration of the men flattered my vanity, for I was by then past thirty, and proud that my voluptuous figure was still attractive. It amused Barras to watch other men make love to me, and I was complaisant. Some of the things that went on in the grotto were distasteful to me, and I soon discovered that Scipion had been right about Paul: he did take both men and women into his bed, and he did mix pleasure and pain in ways I found perverse and repulsive. But I was always free to leave if I did not like what was going on. Paul had other mistresses to turn to, and a harem of beautiful boys.

It was a season of excess, of daring, of hardly knowing right from wrong, up from down. We danced, drank, indulged. We had lived for so long under the shadow of the Red Lady that we hardly remembered what normal life was like. We were survivors—for the moment at least. How long our continued survival would last, we could not have said.